Nintendo Switch updated to suggest Facebook and Twitter friends

Nintendo’s hybrid console receives its 5.0.0 update today and with it are a couple of tweaks to parental controls, new user avatars from Kirby and Arms, and quicker remote-game purchase downloads. The console also gets the ability to add friends who have their Nintendo accounts linked to Facebook or Twitter.

Assuming you’re over the age of 13, you’ll be able to link your Switch’s online Nintendo account to Facebook and Twitter so that you can find your friends on the Switch more easily. We’ve certainly come a long way since the days of the Nintendo Wii where the only way to add friends was by entering a 16-digit alphanumeric code.

The only way it could actually work is if both you and your friend entered each other’s cumbersome codes successfully. These days, the Nintendo Switch lets you add friends by Friend Code, Locally using some kind of WLAN detection, and you can even send requests to people you’ve recently played online with.

You can also add “Friend Suggestions” based on friends who you had on either a 3DS/2DS or Nintendo Wii U, or you can find friends you played mobile titles with on games like Miitomo. With the latest update, there are two additional tabs here for Facebook and Twitter.

To download the update, head to System Settings and scroll all the way down to System > System Update.